Garden Against Time

During the pandemic, British writer and essayist Olivia Lang purchases an old house with a garden in Suffolk. The work of restoring flowerbeds, repairing buildings, and pruning trees not only soothes but also provides food for thought, prompting Olivia to explore the connection between gardens and history and culture. Shelters in difficult times, utopias, and dreams of Eden, luxury items — this is by no means a complete list of what a patch of land with plantings can be. By comparing the free and accessible gardens of Derek Jarman or John Clare with the strict parks built on oppression and violence by the British aristocracy, Lang tries to find an answer to the main question: what is a garden? A paradise for all or a testament to privilege and a result of unequal distribution of resources? Personal or public? There is no unequivocal answer. But there are beautiful plants, a restored and open garden, once laid out by gardener Mark Rumery, now serving as a habitat and source of inspiration for Lang herself, who, with the delight of a novice, discovers the joys and sorrows of seasonal and eternal work in the garden, cyclical in its nature.